The end of Heavy Metal magazine

The End of Heavy Metal Magazine

Over at Fred's HM Fan Blog, comes word that Heavy Metal magazine has ceased publication.

I haven't bought a copy of the magazine in over a decade. Fred's honest reviews of recent issues didn't give me a powerful reason to run out and spend $15 for the magazine. At the same time, I'm sad to see the magazine fold, as in its heyday it was a touchstone of sci-fi / Baby Boomer / stoner culture, an enterprise that revolutionized the presentation of graphic art and comics-based storytelling when it first appeared in April 1977.

For nostalgia's sake I opened up a copy of the August, 1980 issue and read, with some affection, Lou Stathis' pretentious review of 'Rok Muzick' recorded by the New Wave band The Residents; Steve Brown's scathing dissection of Robert Heinlein's turgid novel 'The Number of the Beast'; and Jay Kinney's overview of the comix scene. There are good pieces from Druillet ('Salammbo'), Bilal ('Progress'), and Ribera and Godard ('The Alchemist Supreme'). There's an interview with Moebius, in which he spouts all manner of bullshit, trying too hard to present himself as the eccentric (but visionary) comics artiste.

The minor one-page and third-page comics that were used to max the layout come across as silly, but sometimes interesting, little exercises in art and storytelling. They're part and parcel of a media package that did quite a lot for sci-fi fans back in the day. I'm skeptical that the floundering magazine market here in the U.S. will allow for any kind of resurrection of the magazine, but I know Fred will keep an eye out for any developments........

Book Review: Neq the Sword

Book Review: 'Neq the Sword' by Piers Anthony

4 / 5 Stars

'Neq the Sword' (192 pp.) was published by Corgi Books (UK) in 1975, and features rather gruesome cover art by Patrick Woodroffe. In the 1970s, this sort of graphic illustration could pass muster, but it's doubtful if it would be acceptable nowadays...........

This is the third volume in the 'Battle Circle' trilogy, the other entries being 'Sos the Rope' (1968) and 'Var the Stick' (1972). My review of 'Sos' is here, and 'Var', here.

All three volumes were packaged for the U.S. readership by Avon, in the omnibus 'Battle Circle'.

'Neq the Sword' is set in the same post-apocalyptic America as the first two volumes in the trilogy, in which Neq briefly appears as a minor character. 

As 'Neq' opens, due to the machinations of the enigmatic superman known simply as 'the Master', the nomad society in which Neq lives is in increasing disarray due to a breakdown in the distribution of food, clothing, medicine, and shelter by the technocrats known as the 'Crazies'.

The practice of the Battle Circle, which served to direct aggression into ritualized combat, has been abandoned. The landscape is infested by outlaws and bandits who murder, rape, and rob without fear of retribution. Truck convoys supplying goods to the Crazy hostels scattered around the landscape are being intercepted, and their contents pillaged. 

The Crazies, sworn to pacifism, can do little to prevent the depredations of the outlaws. But Neq, one of the greatest swordsmen in the history of the nomad empire, is willing to help the Crazies revive the supply convoys. He realizes that the nomad society is collapsing, and stern measures are needed to prevent the resumption of the barbarity that defined life in the aftermath of the Blast. 

Accompanied by a young Crazy woman named Miss Smith, Neq sets out on a long-distance drive across northern America, hoping to restore the hostels and quell the activities of the outlaws. His journey will reveal the fate of the former leaders and heroes of the nomad empire, their children, and underscore the need for cooperation between the the advanced society that ruled the world before the Blast, and the devolved remnants of that society.

Like 'Sos' and 'Var', in 'Neq the Sword' author Anthony (the pseudonym of Piers Anthony Jacobs) provides an engrossing action novel within the span of less than 200 pages. More so than the first two novels on the series, the violence in 'Neq' is more explicit and could said to verge into Splatterpunk territory. There also are prominent traces of a softcore porn sensibility in the pages of 'Neq', which perhaps is not so surprising, given that Jacobs wrote sleaze paperbacks ('Pornucopia') in addition to science fiction. 

Where I had to deduct a star for 'Neq' was in its closing chapters, wherein our hero decides to purse the spirit of Kumbaya, and renounces the use of violence. This abnegation has a contrived quality, as if Piers Anthony belatedly had decided to infuse the closing stages of his violent trilogy with a 'make love, not war, sensibility'. Each reader will make his or her own decision as to whether this is a successful maneuver, but for me, I found it facile........

Summing up, while it's not perfect, the 'Battle Circle' trilogy remains a worthy read fifty years after it first was published. The trilogy's tight composition and action-centered discourse made it stand out from the New Wave compositions of the same era, and for this, it deserves accolades.

National Lampoon July 1971

National Lampoon
July 1971

It's July, 1971, and the top single on the Billboard Hot 100 is 'It's Too Late' from Carole King, whose album Tapestry was the biggest-selling record of all time, until displaced later in the decade by the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever.

The latest issue of National Lampoon is on the stands and it's a 'pornography' themed issue, loaded with transgressive content.

The nostalgia craze of the 1970s is under way and with it, advertisements for pop culture artifacts from the prewar era, like a compilation of 'Buck Rogers' comics. I remember reading this book, back in the day.

The Letters pages are their usual snide selves.......particularly the 'Helen Keller' joke.

The 'Hot Flashes' section takes aim at High Hefner, and the Pope, quite a combination of insultees.

A parody of the erotic novel My Secret Life takes aim at the hapless David Eisenhower, grandson of Dwight D. Eisenhower. David married Julie Nixon in 1968, an event that earned him the derision of the counterculture (which included the Lampoon staff, of course). It didn't help matters that when Eisenhower's student deferment ended he sidestepped the draft, and the potential to be sent to Vietnam, by enrolling in the Navy reserve, where he served for three years as an officer.  

The extremely popular book Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, by David Rubin, is satirized.

A cartoon takes aim at Flying Nuns:

Then we have a full-color portfolio, titled 'Groupies for Everyone', which provides what every red-blooded American male wanted from the National Lampoon: boobies !

A Foto Funnies features editor Doug Kenney.

The cartoon titled 'A True Story: The Two Paths' reworks the theme of the Good Girl and the Bad Girl in a clever and subversive manner:

There is another transgressive cartoon:

Chris Miller's story 'Caked Joy Rag' features a brilliant, if grotesque, illustration by Roy Carruthers:

A questionnaire piece, titled 'Are You A Homo ?', probably would not pass editorial muster in any magazine nowadays.........

The issue closes with 'Nancy Reagan's Guide to Dating Do's and Don'ts', in which a motherly Nancy instructs excitable teens to practice restraint, and Save it for Marriage !

And there it is, snide humor from July of 1971.

Book Review: Science Fiction Terror Tales

Book Review: 'Science Fiction Terror Tales' edited by Groff Conklin

 3 / 5 Stars

Here we go with one of the more than 40 anthologies edited by the indefatigable Groff Conklin (1904 - 1968) between 1946 and 1968.

'Science Fiction Terror Tales' (262 pp.) first was published in hardcover in January, 1955 by Gnome Press. A paperback edition was released by Pocket Books later that year. The edition I have, and which is pictured above, was issued in 1970. The artist who provided the striking cover image is uncredited.

The entries in 'Terror Tales' all first saw print in the 1940s and early 1950s.

My capsule summaries of the contents:

Introduction, by Groff Conklin: Conklin states that with this anthology, he sought to include lesser-known, but high-quality, stories.

Punishment Without Crime, by Ray Bradbury (1950): George Hill, a cuckold, seeks vengeance on his wayward wife. An overwrought, contrived tale from Bradbury.

Arena, by Fredric Brown (1944): a Federation fighter pilot named Bob Carson is obliged to engage in a one-against-one, winner-takes-all combat with an alien. The future of the Earth hangs in the balance. Still a good story after these many decades, and the Star Trek episode which is based on this novelette would have been better, had it adopted Brown's ending.

The Leech, by Robert Sheckley (1952): an alien life form lands on the Earth and it proves to be unfriendly. Sheckley, when he wasn't writing comedic sci-fi, could write very good 'straight' stories, and this is one of them.

Through Channels, by Richard Matheson (1951): Leo Vogel's parents see a very strange display on their television screen. An effective story from Matheson. 

Lost Memory, by Peter Phillips (1952): robots investigate an unusual artifact. This story relies on dark humor and, despite somewhat awkward prose, succeeds as a satirical treatment of human nature.

Memorial, by Theodore Sturgeon (1946): Grenfell, an idealist, seeks to convince the nations of the world to abandon warfare. 

Even by the standards of 1940s sci-fi, Sturgeon's prose is painfully stilted:

"Whew !" said Roway, his irrepressible humor passing close enough to nod to him. "Keep it clean, Grenfell ! Keep your.....your sesquipedalian pollysyballics, for a scientific report."

"Touche !" Grenfell smiled.

Prott, by Margaret St. Clair (1953): an astronaut cultivates friendship with exotic alien life-forms; this turns out to be a bad idea.

Flies, by Isaac Asimov (1953): three men who were college acquaintances attend a reunion. This is a real dud of a story from Asimov: stilted prose (He did not like to witness wild murder-yearnings where others could see only a few words of unimportant quarrel), and an underwhelming denouement.

The Microscopic Giants, by Paul Ernst (1936): strange goings-on in the depths of a copper mine. An imaginative story, and one of the better ones in the anthology.

The Other Inauguration, by Anthony Boucher (1953): a historian accesses a parallel universe and discovers that Absolute Power, Corrupts Absolutely. Boucher intends this story to be a minatory analysis of the American political system, but it's the worst entrant in the anthology, overloaded with obtuse prose, including the use of shorthand (?!).

Nightmare Brother, by Alan E. Nourse (1953): Robert Cos finds himself drafted into an unpleasant experiment. This story is too overwritten, and too slowly paced, to be effective.

Pipeline to Pluto, by Murray Leinster (1945): A young man named Hill is desperate to take the clandestine route to Pluto, where the work is hard and the pay quite generous. While the plot can be a bit confusing to follow, Leinster imparts a hard-boiled sensibility to this story that makes it another of the better ones in the anthology.

Impostor, by Philip K. Dick (1953): Spence Olham is a premiere researcher in what may be Mankind's final, desperate effort to stop alien invaders. But the government seems to think Olham is not quite himself........an effective tale from Dick. I'm sure readers familiar with his later writings will find many of Dick's more prominent themes in those works expressed, in nascent form, in this story. 

They, by Robert A. Heinlein (1941): the un-named protagonist is confined in an asylum, because he is convinced that the rest of the human race are aliens masquerading as people. This story vies with Sturgeon's story for 1940s sci-fi awfulness: badly overwritten, wooden prose, and a denouement that fizzles.

Let Me Live in a House, by Chad Oliver (1954): a team of four Terran colonists endure isolation and psychological stress in their transparent dome on Ganymede. Then, one day, there's a knock at the door............Yet another 'paranoia' themed dud, suffering from too many empty sentences steeped in melodramatic prose.

The verdict ? 'Science Fiction Terror Tales' is too short on quality pieces to rate as a must-have compilation of mid-century sci-fi. Those quality pieces it does possess, impart a Three-Star Rating.

Sherlock Holmes The Strange Case of the Queen's Pupils

'Sherlock Holmes: The Strange Case of the Queen's Pupils'

from National Lampoon, July 1971

The issues released in the early years of National Lampoon could be hit-or-miss, but the July 1971 'Pornography' issue has some genuinely funny, and explicitly sleazy, material in its pages. There is a sharper note to the snideness, that comes through in many of the articles.

Among the more amusing entrants is a black-and-white comic, written by Charles O'Hegarty and Michael Choquette, ably illustrated by comics veteran Frank Springer. 'Sherlock Holmes: The Strange Case of the Queen's Pupils' is laugh-out-loud funny, and an effective satire of the British boys' boarding school motif.

Thorgal: The 'Qa' series

Thorgal: The 'Qa' Series

One of the most memorable episodes in the 29 installments of the 'Thorgal' comic book series (albums de bandes dessinees) was the so-called 'Qa' series. 

It was a four-part series, originally issued by the Belgian publisher Lombard, and consisted of the titles Le Pays Qâ (1986), Les Yeux de Tanatloc (1986), La Cité du Dieu Perdu (1987), and Entre Terre et Lumière (1987).

In 2008 - 2009, Cinebook published an English translation of the four titles, partitioned into two graphic novels: The Land of Qa, and City of the Lost God.

There is a note in The Land of Qa that some of the contents in the original album are deleted in the English translation, so as not to give offence; I suspect this has to do with the depiction of the Aztecs' human sacrifices, mention of which is increasingly politically incorrect nowadays.

Both Grzegorz Rosinski and Jean Van Hamme were in top form with the 'Qa' series. Van Hamme's plot stays coherent for almost all of its length and keeps the story beats to a manageable number. He also throws just about every sci-fi or fantasy trope into this series: ancient astronauts, levitating sailing ships, telepathy, telekinesis, and alien artifacts. 

The series kicks off with Kriss of Valnor, the franchise's central villain, coercing Thorgal, his wife Aaricia, and friend Tjall, into journeying with her to the land of Qa (comprising Mexico and part of South America), and completing a mission that is short on details, but long on danger.

Interspersed with moments of violence and mayhem is some lighter fare, often revolving around the avuncular 'Tree Foot', the elderly guardian for Thorgal's son Jolan.

The artwork is impressive, as always, with Rosinski successfully rendering a variety of peoples and exotic landscapes. The 'Qa' series leaves no doubt that Rosinski was one of the top-tier graphic artists of the 1980s and 1990s.

Who will want a copy of The Land of Qa and City of the Lost God ? If you are a Thorgal fan, then these books are well worth getting. But if you are less well-acquainted with the franchise, but appreciate skilled art and story in a European style, then the books are a good investment. It's possible to get each book for under $20 from your usual online vendors.